The Dinner Club
by rebecca-in-blue
Summary: "Vernon has me in his crosshairs. I gotta get him off my back." A few days after detention, Brian and Andy help Bender with a plan to foil their vice principal.


This story is my entry for the point-of-view challenge at Writers Anonymous. I tried to make Bender the main character, even though Brian is the narrator. As a personal aside, Brian was always the Breakfast Club member that I most identified with, and I love how in the movie, he spends a lot of time just watching and observing what the others do.

* * *

_March 28, 1984_

_My parents think keeping a journal is a waste of time. I made an argument for it once, back in freshman year, saying it improves writing skills and self-awareness, but they wouldn't listen. My dad said those things are no substitute for cold hard knowledge._

_But I like journaling. It goes with this sort of game I play in my head sometimes. Right now, for example, I'm not some high school geek sitting here alone on this bench, writing in a journal because he doesn't have any friends to talk to. I'm a graduate student who's observing high school students as research for his sociology thesis._

_Today is Wednesday. Nobody else in the Breakfast Club (the name I gave us in the essay I wrote for Vice Principal Vernon) has talked to me since we all had detention together on Saturday. I told myself to expect that. I told myself nothing would really change. But deep down, I think I was secretly hoping something might be different._

_I passed Claire in the halls earlier today. She was talking with a group of her girlfriends, but she saw me. It wasn't much, but it was more than a passing glance. She made eye contact with me and gave me a little nod. I guess that's all I should hope f_

The pen jerks across my notebook page as someone sits down beside me, nudging my shoulder. I look up to see John Bender. He hasn't changed much since Saturday – dressed in a baggy flannel shirt and faded jeans that smell of stale cigarette smoke – except that his black hair is more unkempt.

"How ya doin', Brian?" he asks, clapping one hand on my back a little too hard.

Last week, Bender sitting down next to me probably would've made me wet my pants. Since Saturday's detention, I'm not scared of him anymore, but he's a little too close for comfort, and it's always hard for me to keep the stammer out of my voice. "Uh, just, uh, doing homework, I guess" is the best answer I can come up with.

It's a chilly, overcast March day, and Bender and I are sitting on a bench outside school, in a small area of brown grass between the activities hall and the student parking lot. Other students are milling around nearby, waiting for rides or to meet friends, but so far, nobody seems to notice someone like Bender sitting with someone like me. Maybe they assume he wants me to do his homework for him; I know a few other nerds who make a lot of money that way.  
Bender jerks his chin at the pile of textbooks on the bench next to me. "So, what kinda science class you take?" he asks conversationally.

"Science class? Uh, biology?" I'm so surprised by this that I sound unsure.

"Biology, that's the study of life, right?"

"Uh, yeah. Well, technically, it-it's the study of living organisms, but–"

"Have you learned anything about that new disease?"

"New disease? What, you-you mean... _AIDS_?" Just saying the word is a little scary, and I have to whisper it, looking around to make sure there's nobody within earshot. The AIDS epidemic has been all over the news lately, and each news report seems worse.

But Bender's conversational tone never changes. "Not that one. The one that leads up to it. HIV."

I quickly look down and cipher some math in the margin of my journal, trying to hide my surprise. I never in a million years expected someone like Bender to know the difference between HIV and AIDS, but if I let him see that, he'd probably kick my ass.

"Well, um, they haven't, you know, taught us anything about that in science class, but I do – well, see, my parents have a subscription to this medical journal? It's been printing articles about the AIDS outbreak, but I mean–" I pause and rack my brain, trying to remember any information from the article. "Uh, have you had any... flu-like symptoms?"

Apparently this is the wrong thing to say, because Bender narrows his eyes and gives me a glare that almost makes me get up and run. But before I can move, someone sits down on the bench on my other side, nudging my shoulder. I look over to see the third guy from our Breakfast Club, Andy Clark. He must be fresh from wrestling practice, because he's still sweaty and has his gym bag slung over one shoulder of his hoodie.

I stiffen warily on the hard bench. I don't want to be stuck between these two, not with how easily Bender can piss off Andy. It was sort of funny, because I realized later that as much as Bender made fun of me on Saturday, he never really pissed me off. I have too much experience in being bullied for that. But nearly everything he said to Andy and Claire riled them up, because they weren't used to it.

"This guy givin' you hassle, Brian?" His question is directed at me, but he looks right past me to Bender, as if I'm not even there.

Bender puts one hand to his chest in a mock pained expression. "Oh, now that hurts my feelings, Clark," he says in that sarcastic tone that I remember so well from detention. "Can't I even chat with a friend without you making accusations?" He goes on, gesturing to me, "Brian here was just helping me figure out a way around Vernon."

"Vernon?" I blurt out, surprised. But we had been talking about HIV, not the vice principal.

"Yeah, I gotta get him off my back. The guy's got me in his cross-hairs." His voice is serious again, and I get the impression that something, maybe something really bad, happened when Vernon separated Bender from the rest of us on Saturday.

"Vernon hates all of us," Andy shrugs.

"Yeah, well, don't get jealous, but _I'm_ special to him."

Andy tilts his head, looking interested. "So... what's your plan?"

Bender sucks in a breath and looks away across the parking lot before he answers, "Maybe I can get him to think I have HIV."

Andy's brown eyes go wide, and his mouth falls open. For a moment, he can't talk, then he leans closer to us, his voice low and urgent. "Listen, Bender, you can't play around with shit like that. Our match with Decatur got canceled a few weeks back, and there was a rumor – just a _rumor_ – that some guy on their team had..." He purses his lips, like he's struggling to say the word, "had... _that,_ and everybody lost their damn minds."

Bender shrugs, still looking away. "It was probably just a load of crap."

"Probably," Andy agrees, "but you should've heard my old man. He kept going on about how a gay guy shouldn't've been on the team in the first place, and how the whole school should be shut down before we all catch the AIDS from wrestling with some faggot."

I wince at the word _faggot,_ thinking of my favorite uncle in Chicago, but I can't help correcting Andy. "Uh, it's just called AIDS, not _the_ AIDS, and you can't catch it from wrestling with someone."

Apparently this is another wrong thing to say, because Andy and Bender both shoot me disgusted stares. "God, I _know _that, Brian," Andy says, exasperated. "I'm just telling you what my old man said."

Bender cracks that sideways smile that he gave me when we got high together in the library. "Yeah, we're not all complete morons just because we don't take..." He pauses and glances at my textbooks. "...advanced trigonometry."

Something in his tone makes me smile, too. It's not a mean-spirited teasing like I usually get from other students. It's friendly, and even though I'm an only-child, I think this must be how brothers tease each other.

"I wonder where a guy gets tested for this thing?" Bender asks.

I shrug, but Andy says the name of a clinic so fast that Bender and I both look at him in surprise. "The school board makes all the student athletes go there every season," he explains. "They do a screening of your piss to make sure you're not on drugs or 'roids or anything, and last time I was there, I saw this poster on the wall, something about free HIV screenings."

Bender's lips curl up in disgust. "I gotta piss in a cup?"

"Not for an HIV test," I say. "They would draw a blood sample from you." Just saying this almost makes me feel woozy. I can't stand needles or getting shots, but Bender looks relieved, like this is a huge improvement.

Just then, a girl from Claire's popular clique passes near our bench. She sees Andy and gives him a little smile, but then she does a double-take, her expression changing, when she sees Bender and me sitting next to him. I look towards the parking lot and see a few other students have noticed us, too. There's confusion on their faces, and I can almost hear them wondering why the school's biggest jock, biggest nerd, and juvenile delinquent could possibly be sitting together. What could the three of us be talking about? There's disapproval from some of them too, like they're angry we've gone outside the borders of our cliques.

Andy and Bender feel their gazes, too. Andy coughs uncomfortably, makes an excuse about needing to get home, and jogs off. Bender doesn't even bother to say anything; he just slides to his feet and slinks away in the opposite direction, lighting a cigarette as he goes. I'm left alone on the bench again, my journal still open on my lap. Only then do I realize that I left my journal open the whole time Bender and Andy were sitting next to me. I never flipped it shut or tried to hide it, like I would have done if my parents ever saw me with it.

I close my journal and slide it back into my backpack. I pull out my copy of _Brave New World_ and read until my dad comes to pick me up.

* * *

Allison would be a good cat burglar. I don't know how or when she does it, but on Monday, she slips notes to Andy, Claire, and me, instructing us to meet that evening at a diner near the school. It's a cheap, greasy-spoon place, and Shermer students never really go there – which is why it's a safe meeting-place for the five of us. I tell my parents I'm going to a study group at a friend's house and jump on my bike.

The ride feels long in the chilly March evening, and the wind makes my fingers go numb around the handlebars. When I push open the door to the diner, the warm air feels good on my face, and when Claire calls my name and waves me over to the booth where they've already gathered, I feel warm in a different way. I squeeze into the booth next to Andy, and there we are – all of us together, the Breakfast Club. But since it's getting dark outside, maybe I should call us the Dinner Club now.

Someone has already ordered two baskets of home fries – "One of Andy, and one for the rest of us," Claire jokes, or maybe she actually means it – while Bender tells us about his solo Saturday detention. We all lean in and listen as he describes how he went there wearing a short-sleeved shirt, so Vernon could see the little cotton swab and strip of medical tape at his elbow and know that Bender had had blood drawn.

Bender didn't give Vernon any trouble that morning, he tells us. He sat down at a table in the library, reading quietly. "I just pretended to be Brian, you know?" which makes Claire nudge me, grinning, and Allison gives a little laugh. Vernon was suspicious of him for behaving so well, and then he saw what Bender was reading: a pamphlet he'd gotten at the clinic – _Knowing Your HIV Status_.

Bender does the funniest mime of how the vice principal's eyes bugged out of his head, how he looked in horror from the pamphlet in his hand to the bandage at his elbow, and how he stumbled backwards away from Bender, almost falling over. Andy laughs so hard that he pounds the table and almost chokes on his fries.

"Oh man, I wish I could've seen Vernon's face," Claire says, grinning admiringly at Bender. He calls him by his first name, John, and something about how she says it makes me think she and Bender have talked between now and last Saturday. "What happened then?"

"He told me to get out. I swear, after all the bullshit he gave me about how I had just better show up for detention on Saturday, he yelled at me to go home. And then, when I got up from the table, he backed away some more, and he did this–" Bender puts one hand over his nose and mouth, and the rest of us laugh again. "–like he might catch HIV just from being in the same room with me." He adds that when he saw Vernon at school today, the man quickly looked away, as if he were scared of him.

"Wow, he's stupid," Allison murmurs. She's moved a little pile of fries onto her napkin, and she's ripping open little packets of sugar to sprinkle on them. But we aren't weirded out by her appetite anymore. Allison, like the rest of us, looks mostly the same as in detention, with her shaggy black bangs hanging down over her eyes again; Claire's makeover job on her didn't last for long.

Andy thinks that Bender should take this further and give Vernon another scare. "Like, next time you see him at school, you could cough in his direction or something," he suggests.

But Bender shakes his head. "Nah, I don't want to get his attention again, now that I've got him ignoring me." He settles back in the booth with a satisfied smile on his face. "That's the best thing you can do when somebody hates your guts," he says, "is to get them to just ignore you."

I suddenly remember what Bender told us about his dad, and how he mimed getting hit just like he mimed Vernon stumbling, but I don't say anything.

Andy wipes his mouth with a napkin, picks up the menu, and flips it open. "Hey, these onion rings look pretty good," he tells us, scanning the list of dishes. "Look, they have a jumbo bowl that feeds five people."

His appetite shouldn't surprise me either, but it still does. "But you just ate an entire plate of fries," I blurt out.

"Yeah, so?" Andy shrugs, and he looks around and motions the waitress over to our booth. Bender rolls his eyes, and Claire and Allison laugh. I smile, too. Part of me hopes that Andy's appetite never gives out, that he keeps ordering food all night, so this evening never ends, and the five of us can just stay here forever.


End file.
